The buzz is that Ford Motor finally will make two things official: CEO Alan Mulally’s retirement date (he never planned to stay past year-end), and COO Mark Fields’ ascension into the CEO job.

Mulally, who came from Boeing in 2006, almost miraculously squired Ford through the the dark days without the Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganizations that General Motors and Chrysler Group underwent. But there’s plenty left for his replacement.

■Fix Lincoln or dump it. Start by giving the cars real names. Who can keep straight the MKX from the MKZ from the MKT? Sure it’s nice to have a luxury brand, but as Cadillac has shown at GM, it takes many years to establish BMW-style credibility, and it won’t be done with re-badged Fords.

■Get busy in China. “We’re clearly late,” acknowledges Mulally, but sales there are starting to roll and the car company can’t afford to stumble in the fast-growing market.

■Stay focused in Europe. The economy’s begun to edge back toward health, which will take auto sales with it. Once Europe isn’t a huge earnings anchor, the temptation will be to take off the pressure, to slow down on job cuts and factory closings. From a corporate standpoint, bad idea.

■Keep Mulally’s all-for-one philosophy steaming ahead. It’ll be easy to slide back into Ford’s notorious fiefdoms without constant pressure from the boss, and those warring fiefdoms are part of the problem that put Ford at the edge of bankruptcy before Mulally took over and smashed the silos.